Texas rancher trains dogs to tend to cattle

In a Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011 photo, Rooster, a Hangin Tree cowdog, waits on a wooden spool for his next chore. Hangin Trees cowdogs are known for their sturdy and distinctive working style. (AP Photo/News-Journal, Les Hassell)

EAST MOUNTAIN — Mike Wright looks for two things in a cowdog — presence and eye.

“It’s very similar to the way people are,” the lifelong cattleman and dog trainer said. “If you’ve got three people giving you lip, and you walk up there, are you looking at all three of them? Or, are you looking at the one that’s closest to you?”

The 30 or 35 border collies and hangin’ tree dogs in a kennel outside Wright’s East Mountain home know the answer to that.

“These dogs, they are looking at that cow that’s closest to them,” he said. “I want the one that’s going to look at the one that’s the closest — ‘You move, I’m gonna get you.’ That’s presence. Presence, presence — presence is a huge word. It’s everything. It’s everything, and lots of eye.”

Wright, 47, worked with both cattle and dogs as boy in Mount Pleasant.

“They take the place of three or four hands for us,” he said, describing his niche in the cattle world, getting herds in optimum shape for market.

Starting his dogs at 7 or 8 months old, Wright puts each through training beginning with getting them used to humans and horses.

“We take a young dog. We teach them to follow, to go with us (while we are) horseback,” he said. “We teach them their names — the basic stuff. And then they go through a 30-day period of what we call collar training.”

Commands are learned in that month, and he didn’t mean sit, stay and shake.

The terms Wright’s dogs master include, “down,” a command to hunch down and be still; “come,” if the dogs are to your right, and, “here,” if they are to the left. “Come by,” tells them to circle back clockwise, while, “way to me,” sends them counterclockwise.

“They learn to associate what side you call them from,” Wright said. “They start understanding what you mean, and then it all kind of goes together like a puzzle. ... It’s all a system, very systematic.”

“A lot of people use force, we use collars,” he said. “It’s a lot in the way you use your voice. That’s why a lot of people can’t operate a dog, is they don’t use their voice correctly. You have to use a lot of tone.”

Soon enough, the dogs get to work in a pen — first with sheep, then young cattle and finally the big bossies. Once they’ve matriculated behind the wire, it’s out to pasture — time for the real work, gathering and driving.

“A hangin’ tree and a border collie are more gathering type dogs,” Wright said. “In other words, they bring cattle to you instead of push them away. Mine’ll do both. I don’t usually teach the driving part till they get a little aging on them — I call that a broker dog.

“In gathering, a dog is taught to bunch (the cattle together) — they balance with you. Where you are, they are not. They are on the opposite side of the cattle. That’s their natural instinct, is to gather. They have to be taught to stay back there. You have to teach these dogs to stay back there and balance (your presence) and bring the cattle to you.”

When a cow or bull sticks its nose outside the herd’s perimeter, it’s the dog’s job to snap it back with a bite to the nose or leg. Eventually, presence and eye are enough.

Driving has its own hazards. Cattle tend to keep doing whatever they are doing at the time, which means once they get the idea they are moving a direction they kind of fix on that and a cowboy can soon have 1,500 head off to the races.

Stop the dogs, he knows, and the cattle will chill.

That command sounds sort of like a long, “here,” without the, “h.” ‘’Down” won’t do, he said, “Because they’ll hurt themselves if they ‘down’ from a run.”

“The pushing of the cattle is where the dog really gets to driving,” he said. “They have to be more, robotic, is the word. In their heart and in their mind, they’re wanting to go yonder. But we use them to flank the cattle. If the cattle get too trotty, if they look like they are going to get ahead of us too much, then we roll them up.”

A cowboy might want to stop the herd to tend to one cow that needs field doctoring. The rest of the herd stays put while that takes place because, well, presence and eye.

“Cattle, actually, that are work with dogs that are done right are calmer,” he said. “They don’t run off.”

When driving cattle toward a pen, each breed as its own skill set.

“A lot of times, if I’m penning cattle somewhere I might use the border collies for 300 yards and then raise my hand and get two or three hangin’ tree dogs and finish up,” he said, noting the mixed-breed canines with the Western name are the more aggressive cowdogs.

To a cowboy, dogs and horses are tools. Wright doesn’t make those tools, he just teaches them how to fulfill their destiny.

“It’s gaining control of what they have the desire to do (naturally),” he said. “That’s what they’re bred to do, that’s what they want to do.”